Commuted sentences

Good morning, and how are we doing on this Monday again? I have to tell you about something I saw last week: I was sitting in traffic on the 405 on my way to work, and as I'm prone to doing, I looked around at the cars in the same situation as me. One lane over and one car up, I saw the most perfectly-placed license plate imaginable: H8 405. I was understandably thrilled. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the 405 parking lot any more than the next guy, but that's commitment when you pay extra to have that as a personalized plate.

My dad called to tell me about a car he was behind later that same day. The plate read "FU TLG8R," plate-speak for "Fuck you, tailgater" in case you can't tell. Is it just me, or doesn't something like that actually invite more tailgating than they would've received without it? For example, if someone had a bumper sticker that said "I Hate Hand Puppets," you'd better believe I'd bust out my entire catalog of animal shapes while slowly passing that car. At the very least, "FU TLG8R" made my dad tailgate in order to take a picture of it with his phone for me.

Then the next day, the 405 was the gift that kept on giving as my wife and I carpooled to work. First, a car in front of us asked a question that I'm pretty sure we've all wondered from time to time: "How would Jesus drive?" My guess is probably the speed limit and more apt to let folks merge than the average man, but I have no proof of that. I'm assuming that the owner of that car is kidding, because what could they really accomplish with that? The only thing I can think of is reminding Christians about Jesus' teachings of peace in hopes to curb the honking and swearing, but aside from that, I've got nothing.

Speaking of merging, I get very upset sometimes when people don't do it properly. If two slow-moving lanes are becoming one, there's a right way to do it: one here, one there, etc. We call this the Zipper Method, naturally. When it's my turn in the zipper and some dicknead is trying to get two in on one side and not let me in, I usually first ask, "Really?" and then I say, "Honor the Zipper, man, honor the Zipper." (You can find an explanation of 'dicknead' in my post entitled "Comedic Detour" if you thought that was just a typo.)

Back to that glorious day on the 405: Right after "HWJD?" we saw a license plate that read "A REALMN." Maybe it's just me, but I find that to be along the lines of the "I Love My Wife!" bumper sticker in that it comes off as defensive. To me, someone that puts that on his license plate is saying, "I'm a real man. I would've gotten 'REAL MAN' but it was taken, but I'm more of a man than whoever has that plate. I don't care what you've heard about me, I'm real. Ok, fine, I slept with one guy once, but I was drunk and that was a long time ago, and he came on to me. And he had long hair so I was confused. Seriously, guys, can we drop that already? I'm a real man. And I hate France." Again, maybe it's just me.

Lastly, just a minute later, we saw a truck for a company that does electrician work. On both sides of the truck in big letters it read, "Drug Tested, Background Checked, Professionally Trained." The order struck both me and my wife as very curious. When I call to have an electrician come out, while I don't want them to be high, I first care that they know what the hell they're doing. I'd do fine on the drug test and background check, but I wouldn't want me installing recessed lighting in my house.

Anyway, I'm thankful for the 405's opinionated drivers. It certainly keeps me more entertained on my treks to and from work, even though I'm often screaming in my head, "GO! GOOOOO!" It's too bad "H8 405 BT LUV NHRNT CMDC VLU" wouldn't fit on a plate.

Remember, gentle readers, if you see, hear, or think of things that I might love or hate, email me at ptklein@gmail.com. With any luck, I can have weekly bumper sticker/license plate reports for your viewing enjoyment. Have a good Monday.

Comedic detour

I was all set to write about something else this morning, but two things happened on the drive into work that changed my plan. Come to think of it, that happened yesterday also. Maybe the secret to comedy isn't timing after all, but traffic. I'll look into this.

First, the shorter story. A little over a year ago, we were living in an apartment complex with one parking spot for both of us. My wife had recently purchased a new car, so I had no problem letting her have that spot while I usually just found one on a side street nearby. One day, I got a good spot on the main street. When I went out to my car later, there was a note on my windshield: "Dickhead - next time pull all the way up!" I looked, and sure enough there was a foot or two of curb before it turned red and an extra car (or at least a third of one) may have been able to park there as well. I was a little taken aback that my first offense angered this person enough to start the note off with "Dickhead," but that's not what stuck from this encounter. You see, the stem on the 'h' in "Dickhead" was shorter than it should've been, making it look like I was being addressed as "Dicknead." (We pronounced it like dick-need to accentuate the error rather than dick-ned, by the way.)

It didn't take long for "Dicknead" to work its way into my vocabulary. I've found that I only use it in very specific situations, such as someone staying in a faster lane and then cutting over to where they need to be at the very last second, thereby causing more of the traffic that they were avoiding with their frustrating move. It happened this morning in fact. I was slowly moving along in an exit only lane, and someone forced his way in at the last second and caused me to brake pretty hard. "Watch it, Dicknead," I said aloud in my car. And like that, a post was born.

Well, half a post at least. (As a side note, my wireless keyboard just ran out of batteries in the middle of the word "post" in the last sentence, so I stole a co-worker's keyboard for the time being. Don't tell.) Here, as promised, is story number two:

On the radio this morning, the guys on KROQ were playing messages that people left for them saying weird things. One guy half-heartedly made a bad joke, then quarter-heartedly laughed afterwards. Ralph on the show then said, "No, that didn't work. When you have weak material, you need to bring it!" I know exactly what he's talking about. Committing to a joke in comedy is probably one of the top three keys to success (after timing and traffic, of course). No matter how good the idea or line is, if it’s weakly delivered or the speaker lacks confidence in the line’s ability to get a laugh, it will fail.

Take Robin Williams for example. Most of the time, nobody knows what the guy is saying. He’s jumping around, doing different accents, and making the most obscure references known to man. However, we laugh. We laugh a lot. Why is this? It’s because he knows that he’s funny, and we therefore expect whatever comes out of his mouth to be funny. The same thing is true with Dennis Miller; it comes across in his delivery that what he’s saying is, by definition, funny. Therefore, we laugh even if we don’t know how he just compared Boris Yeltsin and Florence Henderson.

Another way commitment comes into play is that it can turn something that isn’t funny into a big laugh from the audience. Comedy Sportz, and improvisational comedy company, performs weekly all over the country. I was at a performance by the Los Angeles team in the late 90s, and I saw such an amazing display of commitment that I’ve carried it with me as an example ever since. The audience was shouting out actions for the actors to perform one by one. When it got to an actor named Frank Maciel’s turn, an audience member shouted, “Put a book on the table!” That has to be one of the inherently least-funny suggestions ever thrown out at a night of improv. Frank, however, as in-the-moment as I’ve ever seen anyone, magnificently strutted up the table, slammed his imaginary book down, then gave the table a look of defiance as if to say, “That’s right. I’ll put this book anywhere I damn please. If you’ve got a problem with that, maybe we should step outside and settle things.” The crowd erupted in laughter and applause. From "Put a book on the table" to laughter - that's a tough road. Frank took a non-funny thing and by means of totally committing to it, made it hilarious, unique, and something I’ve remembered for years.

Another actor in that position only would have mocked the person who shouted out that suggestion by walking normally to the table and saying something like, “Ooh, I’m putting a book on the table.” Kinda funny, would elicit some chuckles, but nowhere near what Frank turned it into.

Ok, I have to end now and search for batteries before the rightful owner of this keyboard arrives. I wouldn't want to return from the bathroom to find a note taped to my monitor calling me an "Assnole."